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Ask Shawn Collins: Becoming an Affiliate

November 29, 2004 by Shawn Collins

Q: How do I, in becoming actively involved as an affiliate to another website, technically speaking, actually place the affiliate ad on my website usually. Do I need to be knowledgeable as a computer technician? I need an example of how to technically, on my computer screen, become an affiliate. Is there only one way involving copying and pasting there logo on your website or is there another general way.

Shawn CollinsA: In order to begin the journey of becoming an affiliate, your first step is to create a Web site. This requires that you have a host for your site, as well as a means for creating and uploading your pages.

As far as hosts, my personal favorite is PHP Webhosting ($9.95 a month).

Also, if you are serious about your efforts as an affiliate, I would urge you to purchase a domain name for your site. As far as domains, I like GoDaddy ($8.70 a year).

In order to create the pages for your site, you’ll need an HTML editor. HTML is the language used to create Web pages.

HTML is really easier than it looks. You can code the pages by hand (in Notepad), but it will take some learning on your part.

You can also jump right into a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) HTML editor, in which you can compose pages with a basic knowledge of Windows applications.

In fact, you can save a MS Word document (in the newer releases) as an HTML file — just save it as a “Web Page.”

According to a poll I took of ClubMom affiliates, 75 percent were using Dreamweaver, MS FrontPage, and a handful of other HTML editors for their sites.

Another 25 percent were composing their sites by hand with raw HTML or using Arachnophilia, which is a great free program (it’s what I use, even though the Dreamweaver devotees keep trying to convert me) that is basically raw HTML with shortcuts for some of the monotonous keystrokes.

When the HTML pages have been created, then you will need to upload them. Some hosts offer a utility to upload from the host interface.

Otherwise, you will need an FTP program. I use WS_FTP to upload my pages.

The affiliate programs will provide you with snippets of HTML code to add to your site to display banners and text links. These snippets of code will include your affiliate ID, so the companies will be able to credit any referred leads or sales to you.

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